Make Out with Murder

  “Pardon?”

  “You’re done on this side. Roll over onto your back.”

  I did.

  “I got her a job here,” she went on. “She didn’t have to work, of course. She was rich. But she wanted to work, she didn’t like the idea of living off her inheritance and not establishing herself as a person responsible for her own existence. She was extremely tough-minded, Chip.”

  Her hands were working on my arms and shoulders and chest and stomach. She used a firm touch at first, but as she got further south she switched to a feathery stroking. My mind was not at all interested in sex, for a change, but my body was beginning to display a mind of its own.

  I forced myself to talk about Melanie, and how Haig and I were convinced she had been murdered. I didn’t go into details and I didn’t mention the bombing the night before. I asked her if she had any ideas who might have wanted to kill Jessica.

  “Some man,” she said.

  “I meant specifically.”

  She shook her head and ran her fingers over my thighs. “You meet strange people in this business,” she said. “Some very unreal men. The names they’ll call a woman when they get off. I don’t think they’re even conscious of it most of the time. It’s automatic, some deep built-in hatred of the entire female sex, and their own sexuality is all mixed up with a desire to dominate and hurt. I had a theory about Jess.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, it doesn’t point anywhere in particular. But I figured she had a client for a massage and he managed to get her home address. He went up there and fucked her and hurt her and then he killed her and threw her out the window. He could have beaten her up, you know. It wouldn’t have showed because the fall would have hidden any injuries.”

  Haig and I had already discussed this. Anything less than a bullet hole would have been consistent with injuries suffered in that great a fall.

  “But if Melanie was murdered, then probably it was the same person both times.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Which makes my theory fall down. It’s not just a man who hates women. It’s a man with a particular hatred for women named Trelawney.”

  “Right.”

  “I can’t think who it could be.”

  “Possibly someone who stands to gain by killing the five sisters.”

  “Who stands to gain?”

  “It’s hard to tell. The money wasn’t entailed, it passed over completely to the girls under Cyrus Trelawney’s will. Leo Haig is working on it.”

  “I wish I could help.”

  We chatted a little more, and then she drew her hands away and I thought the massage was over. I sort of hoped it was. I couldn’t take very much more of this.

  She said, “It’s very warm in here, Chip. Would you mind if I removed my uniform?”

  She had a fine body, long and lean and supple. Her breasts were very firm and her stomach perfectly flat. Her skin smelled spicy.

  She put her hands right where I hoped she would put them. She pressed gently, then moved her fingers in that feathery stroke.

  “There’s one muscle group I haven’t been able to relax,” she said.

  “Yeah. It’s sort of embarrassing, if you want to know.”

  “I’d be embarrassed if you didn’t react that way. Would you like me to do something about it?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “You have to tell me what you want me to do.”

  “Uh.”

  She was not touching me now. “This isn’t part of the standard massage,” she explained. “You’ve had the standard treatment already.” I had had the treatment, all right. “If there’s anything else you would like, you have to tell me specifically what it is. And then you give me a present because you like me, and I do something very nice for you because I like you, and that’s how it’s done.”

  “I see.”

  “What would you like?”

  “Uh. I don’t know what the choices are.”

  “For a small present I could do something manual. For a large present I could do something oral.”

  “I see.”

  “You already know I have nice hands. I also have a very nice mouth.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “I’ve received lots of compliments on it.”

  “I’m sure you have.”

  “So if you’d like to ask me to do something—”

  “How much is a small present?”

  “Ten dollars would be a small present. Twenty dollars would be a large present. A lot of people give me larger presents than that, but I sort of like you. You’re clean and you’re not an unpleasant person.”

  I had about twenty-five dollars with me after paying my trial membership fee. But I was going to have to take cabs and be ready to spend money if the need arose. The twenty-dollar present was out of the question and the ten dollar present seemed like a lot of money for a very second-best experience. And I really didn’t like the idea of paying for sex. I could almost rationalize this on the grounds that it wouldn’t be sex, exactly. I mean, there was nothing really sexual about it, for Pete’s sake. It would just be a release from tension. Recreational therapy, you could call it.

  What it comes to, really, is that if I had had a hundred dollars in my pocket I would probably have given twenty of them to Andrea. Since I had twenty-five, I told her I was afraid I would have to pass.

  “That’s cool,” she said, slipping back into her uniform. “Maybe you’ll drop around again sometime.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “And if there’s any way I can help you find out who killed Jess—”

  “Maybe there is,” I said.

  “How?”

  “It might help if we knew the names of her customers for the week before she was killed. I don’t suppose there would be any connection, but something might turn up.”

  She gave a low whistle. “That’s a tough one. There’s no record kept of what guy goes with what girl. They keep track of the number of massages everybody does because you get a percentage of that on top of the presents clients give you. And they keep the names from the membership forms, but you’d be surprised how many men are ashamed to give their right name.”

  “Not all that surprised, actually.”

  “I suppose I could find those records, though. For the week before Andrea died? I’ll have to be sneaky. You’re not supposed to have access to the records. I think they’re afraid some of the girls might try a little blackmail. But I’m good at schemes and I shouldn’t have much trouble getting around Rastus out there.”

  My face must have showed something. She laughed. “No, I’m not a racist,” she said. “No more than the next bigot, anyway. That’s his name.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I don’t think he was born with it. But it’s his name now and he likes to watch people when he introduces himself. Don’t forget your watch, Chip.”

  The watch I almost forgot told me that it was ten minutes after two when I left Indulgence. I went around the corner and had a cheeseburger and some iced tea. Walking I was not a very pleasurable experience at the moment. Andrea Sugar had drained all the pain out of my backbone and rolled it up into a ball and stuffed it into my groin.

  I’d given her Leo Haig’s number and told her to call as soon as she had the records of clients for the week in question. I couldn’t see how it would help, especially since anyone planning to kill Andrea would have likely used a name about as legitimate as old Norm Conquest himself, but it was something to do.

  She had always been convinced that Jessica had been murdered. That was the sort of fact Leo Haig usually found interesting and suggestive, so I spent a dime telling him about it. By the time I left the restaurant I could almost walk without limping.

  Almost.

  Nine

  Ferdinand Bell’s office was within limping distance on the ninth floor of a tall narrow building on 48th Street, just east of Fifth. The building directory in the lobby showed t
hat most of the tenants dealt in stamps or coins. Or both.

  In the elevator a man with a European accent said, “I can never recommend for appreciation any surcharges or overprints priced significantly higher than their regular issue counterparts. It is not merely that they may be counterfeited, but that the mere prospect of counterfeiting prevents their reaching their logical levels.” I still do not have the slightest idea what he was talking about. I related the conversation to Haig, who understands everything, and of course he nodded wisely. He wouldn’t tell me what it meant, though.

  “If you want to learn about anything under the sun,” he aid, “you have only to read the right detective story. The Nine Tailors will tell you as much as you need to know about bell-ringing in English country churches, for example.” (It told me more than I needed to know, to tell you the truth.) “For philately, MacDonald’s The Scarlet Ruse is excellent. There are others that are less likely to e to your taste—”

  “Philately? They were talking about stamps?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I didn’t know,” I said. “How was I supposed to know?”

  I haven’t read The Scarlet Ruse yet. I suppose I’ll get to it eventually. The thing is, Haig keeps giving me books to read, and it’s impossible to keep up. I did read a couple of books with a coin-collecting background recently, one by Raymond Chandler and another by Michael Innes, so I now know a little more about numismatics than I did when I walked into Ferdinand Bell’s office.

  He was the man I’d picked out at the funeral as the most likely candidate for the Ferdinand Bell look-alike contest. Today he was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt, open at the throat, and a pair of gray pants that might have been from the suit he’d worn a day ago. They certainly looked as though he had been wearing them for a while.

  I had established earlier that he was around forty-seven, He looked both older and younger, depending on how you looked at him. He was plump, with chipmunk cheeks and happy little eyes, and that made him appear younger than he was, but his hair (short and snow white, with a slightly, receding hairline) added a few years to his appearance. He sat on a stool behind a row of glass showcases in which coins rested on top of two-by-two brown envelopes. There was a bookcase to his right, filled to capacity, and a desk to his left with a great many books and magazines piled sloppily on it.

  He looked up when I entered, which I guess is not too surprising, and he blinked rapidly when I told him who I was.

  “Yes, Mr. Haig called me. So I’ve been awaiting you. But somehow I expected an older man. Aren’t you a little young to be a detective? And didn’t I see you at the funeral?”

  I gave him a qualified yes. Since I wasn’t officially a detective the first question was hard to answer. And the second was impossible; I had been at the funeral, and I saw him there, but how did I know whether he saw me?

  “Have a seat,” he said. “Or should we go somewhere and have a cup of coffee? But I don’t think we’ll be disturbed here today. My Saturdays are usually quiet. I tend to mail orders and such matters. That’s if I’m not out of town working a convention. The A.N.A. is coming up in two weeks. It’s in Boston this year, you know.”

  I didn’t. I also didn’t know what the A.N.A. was, but I’ve since learned. It’s the American Numismatic Association, and it’s the most important coin convention of the year. He went on to tell me that he had a bourse table reserved and expected to be bidding on some choice lots in the auction. Large cents, I think he said.

  “I understand you believe Melanie was murdered,” he said. “I’m reading between the lines there. Your Mr. Haig was deliberately vague. Dear me, I’ve made an unintentional rhyme, haven’t I? Your Mr. Haig/Was deliberately vague. And I gather you have a client in this matter?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t suppose you could tell me who it is?”

  Haig had said I could, and so I did. I told him one of hem, anyway.

  “Caitlin! Extraordinary.”

  I wanted to ask him why it was extraordinary. Instead I started asking him some questions about his wife, Robin. Had she seemed at all nervous in the weeks immediately receding her death? Had her behavior changed in any remarkable way?

  He squinted in concentration and I swear his nose witched like a bunny’s. “As if she had some precognitive feelings about her fate? I never thought of that.”

  “Or as if she were afraid someone would murder her.”

  “Dear me. Now that’s a speculation I’ve never entertained. Just let me think now. Do you know, I can’t even concentrate on her attitude then because the whole idea of her having been murdered is so startling to me.”

  I nodded.

  “Naturally I blamed myself for her death. After all, I was driving. I have a tendency to let my mind wander when I drive. Especially when tired, and I was tired that day; it had been a grueling weekend.” He leaned forward and pressed his forehead with the fingertips of one hand. “I had never had an accident before. My woolgathering never seemed to interfere with my driving. Although I could never help thinking that if I had been paying a bit more attention to what I was doing I might have seen that patch of ice.” He moved his hand to shade his eyes. “And Robin might be alive today.”

  I didn’t say anything for a minute or two. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and straightened up on his stool. He forced his smile back in place.

  A wistful look came into his eyes. “There’s something I’ve always wondered about, Chip. May I call you that?”

  “Sure.”

  “Something I’ve always wondered about. That skid I took. I grew up in an area where winter was long and severe. I learned to drive on snow and ice, how to react to sudden skids. Not to fight the wheel, to turn with the skid, all of those actions that are contrary to instinct and must consequently be learned and reinforced. And on the day of the accident I reacted as I had been trained to react.”

  “But it didn’t work.”

  “No, it did not. And I’ve wondered if there couldn’t have been a possibility of mechanical failure involved. I had the car looked at. It wasn’t damaged all that severely, and if Robin had been sitting beside me and wearing a belt—” His face darkened. He bit his lip and went on. “They found that the steering column was damaged. I had never thought before that it might have been tampered with. Now I find myself wanting to seize on the possibility to whitewash my own role in the affair. If the car had been sabotaged, if some fiend intentionally caused that accident—”

  He got to his feet. “You must excuse me,” he said. “I have a nervous stomach. I’ll be a few moments. You might like to have a look at the coins in that case. There are some nice Colonials.”

  I had a look at the Colonials. I couldn’t really tell you if they were nice or not. I also had a look at the books on his desk and in the glass-fronted bookcase. They all seemed to be about coins, which probably stood to reason. Some of them looked very old.

  I was thumbing through a book called The United States Trade Dollar, by John Willem, when Bell came back. “An illuminating book,” he said over my shoulder. “The Trade dollar was coined purely to facilitate commerce in the Orient. The Chinese traders would put their personal chop marks on them to attest to their silver value. I’ve a few pieces in stock if you’d care for a look at the genuine article.”

  He showed me three or four coins, returned them to their little brown envelopes and put them away. “My library is my most important asset,” he said. “There’s a motto in professional numismatics—Buy the book before the coin. The wisest sort of advice and all too few people follow it. Numismatics is a science, not just a matter of sorting change and filling holes in a Whitman folder. Take those Trade dollars. The whole history of the China trade is waiting to be read there.”

  He went on like that for a while. I tend to look interested even when I’m not, which Haig tells me is an asset; people reveal more of themselves to people who appear interested. So I listened, and it really was pretty inter
esting, but it wasn’t getting me any closer to the man who killed Melanie and tried to bomb Leo Haig’s house.

  I found an opportunity to get the conversation back on he rails and brought up the question of motive. “Suppose someone did sabotage your car. He couldn’t have been certain of killing just Robin. He would have had a shot at killing you, too.”

  “That had occurred to me.”

  “Well, anyone who’s busy killing off five sisters probably wouldn’t draw the line at including someone else here and there. Who benefited by Robin’s death?”

  “Financially?” He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s no secret, surely. Except for a few minor bequests, I inherited Robin’s entire estate.”

  “But suppose you had both been killed in the accident.”

  “Dear me. I hadn’t thought of that. I’d have to check that, but it seems to me that I recall a provision to cover my dying before Robin. It would also cover simultaneous death, I presume. It’s my recollection that the estate would be divided among her surviving sisters.”

  “I see.”

  “I’d have to check, but that would present no difficulty. My lawyer has a copy of Robin’s will. I could call him first thing Monday morning. Just let me make a note of that.”

  He made a note of it, then looked up suddenly. “I say, Chip. You don’t think I ought to consider myself in danger now, do you?” He laughed nervously. “It’s hard to take | seriously, isn’t it? But if it ought to be taken seriously—”

  “Do you have a will?”

  “Yes, of course. I drew up a new will shortly after Robin’s death. A few thousand dollars to a couple of numismatic research foundations, some smaller charitable j bequests, and the balance to my sister in Lyons Falls.”

  “And you inherited Robin’s estate free and clear?”